The Quiet Ones

by Glenn Diaz

  Scott chuckled and wrapped an arm around me; it was too late when I realized he was leading me into the same resto-bar where he said he lost his bag.

  It was never too early for drinks in the resort town, and nearly every table was occupied by groups gathered around buckets of beer and platefuls of sisig. Up front, a female figure was half-lit with the glare from a videoke machine, the cord of the mic wrapped around her elbow.

  “Check her out,” Scott said, before letting out an appreciative hoot. The lady wrapped up “Sweet Child of Mine” to polite applause from the captive crowd. “This is great,” he said.

  The machine gave the woman her score.

  Up next, for which the same lady loudly cleared her throat, was “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Every now and then, feedback would issue from the microphone, and she would pull it away from her mouth, the vibrato nicely drifting off. Scott sang along, while the rest of the bar continued its reverie, its “performance.” The boisterous, drunken atmosphere reminded me of Providence, which also became a favorite after-shift booze joint for us at the call center. Laid-back at night, the place would get unbelievably loud in the morning, something we had long connected to the stress that came with the job.

  The song’s conclusion made way for a spattering of applause. “Nothing like Carole King to induce a little nostalgia,” Scott said, clapping.

  “Haven’t heard of her,” I said.

  “You know what they say about nostalgia?”

  “What?”

  “That it’s a social disease,” he said, air-quoting the last two words.

  Oh, Alvin.

  He sighed. “Fine.”

  “What?”

  “I forgive whoever stole that bag.”

  “OK—” I said, unsure.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” he asked, pointing to the woman in front, now keying in the number for another song. “I mean, far from the original, of course, but so proficient in the technical sense. Flawless, flawless reproduction.”

  I took a swig of beer, one arm raised to gesture “two more” to our waiter.

  “Good accent, too,” Scott said. “She could probably work at your company.” He reached for my hand atop the table. “You know,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze, “I was just thinking. We were talking about religion, right?”

  I looked around for our insubordinate waiter.

  Scott looked at me. “Maybe God gave you guys such beautiful singing voices so you could sing so magnificently of the tragedies in your lives.”

  My hand returned the squeeze; he winced in fake pain.

  I remembered the weeks-long training in pronunciation and idioms and American culture. Aspirate the T’s in the beginning of words, glide over them elsewhere, as in “twenty.” “Come again?” is a Filipinism; the correct expression is “Excuse me?” or “Pardon me?” Americans enjoy barbecues, value their freedom, and walk their dogs twice a day. They are “rugged individualists” who move out of their parents’ house as soon as they turn eighteen. They watch a lot of crime shows and football. They like money.

  “What’s wrong?” Scott asked.

  “Nothing. Basta.”

  Last on the woman’s playlist was a popular Imelda Papin torch song, cued by bars of histrionic French horns and cheering from the denizens. (“Now these I don’t like so much,” Scott said, standing up to head to the restroom.) If the woman was “proficient” with the standards, here, in this song about unrequited love, the sting of it, the secret sweetness of it, she seemed extra energized, extra eager. For the opening line she ploughed her chest for a long sustained belt, the first note hanging in the air, escorted by loud cheers. Every note, she hit, negotiating the sappy Tagalog lines with natural ease.

  The bar sat spellbound. There was more cheering when she powered through the bridge, the chorus. Noticing her adoring devotees, she turned slightly to the tables, away from the machine. At one point she even gave us a little shy wave, which emboldened us even more in our ovation. She swayed inelegantly to the long instrumental, prelude to the final verse.

  Would she hit the crucial note? The be-all and end-all of this song, this story, this mad universe. The waiters stopped taking orders. We held our breaths. At the approach of the climax, she clutched the microphone with two hands, lowered her elbows, bent her knees, and spread her feet apart. When the music stopped, we heard a forceful intake of air before she opened her mouth and, punching the air, she hit it, the note vibrating for ten, fifteen seconds, a day, a week, a month, the bar, when she finally put the mic down, a war zone.

  She had won.

  My phone beeped.

  “Found d bag,” the text read. “Pls cum 2 station.”

  The bar had settled down when Scott returned.

  I told him I regret giving those cops cigarette money.

  “Told you,” he said, giving me a peck on the cheek.

  The police here, I told Scott, they’re so inefficient and corrupt. Once, two plainclothes cops went to our house when we were building our second floor and had some construction materials up front. Where’s our building permit? they asked. Well, Mama said, it’s not really a building. It’s a house. The cops threatened to arrest her and the four workers for her errant humor if my mother didn’t fork over P5,000.

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Hey,” I said, checking my watch. “It’s been a few hours now. That bag is gone.”

  “Oh well,” he said “It’s probably for the best. A first hand insight into a quintessential Third World reality, if you will.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry,” I raised my bottle to him, to the singing lady now slumped soundless on her table. “You must feel terrible.”

  13

  W hen Scott was new to Manila, I showed him around, like the hospitable host that tourism ads said we were. Wearily regal Intramuros, then a second-hand book stall at the fetid war-era underpass outside the walls. A concert of the Philippine Philharmonic at the Cultural Center then a nervous stroll at the forested area outside where druggies and male prostitutes lurked behind terminally bent tree trunks. Quiapo Church during Friday mass, then, outside, the archipelago of giant multicolored umbrellas, under which sat old wrinkly women with their grimy tarot cards, crystal balls, and bruised herbs.

  It was only later when I realized that there was a pattern to our trips. They were binaries. A buffed and benign touristy spot paired with an inhospitable, unkind corner. I must have been guided by a vague idea of balance, wholeness, transparency. All along the swirl of conversation, questions and answers, observations and defense, explanations, clarifications, as if, in showing him around Manila, I was also introducing myself, which of course I was.

  But he never understood some things. Our jeep awaiting a red light in Kalentong, once, he looked at the row of wooden shanties perched just above the still, garbage-strewn Pasig River and said, “Kind of beautiful, if you think about it, this precarious endurance.” Another time, outside a movie house in Greenbelt, he struck up a conversation with one of them potbellied Caucasian men with a pint-size Filipina in one arm, more and more a familiar sight around the metro. “True love, eh?” he said, looking at me. The three of them laughed. I confronted him later that night before we parted ways, he to his apartment, I to work.

  Of course, he was being facetious, he said, of course . It was disgusting, patriarchy, blech! But it was arresting, how concise it was, centuries of history embedded in that gesture—that girl’s arm clinging like a scrawny snake to the man’s sycamore bicep. Surely I wouldn’t begrudge him of saying that?

  “Saying what?” I asked. “That the white creep was ‘placeless’?”

  “Oh, Alvin.”

  “Aren’t you going to pack?” Scott called out from inside the room, in his voice the tired bass of hung-over mornings. “The bus in Laoag leaves at two.”

  He could say Laoag, that’s a tough one. Not “Lew-ag” or “La-weg.” Kudos to that tongue. My mandatory post-breakfast cigarette had become two, then three. N
ow I was on my fourth. Whatever it was that Scott and I had, this feckless, nameless thing, it was bad for my lungs. A ball of smoke bobbled in my throat, lingered like a prickly knot. I held my breath, massaged my neck, and the carcinogen drifted out in one soft exhale.

  I congratulated myself, for this and many other victories of late.

  “You there, Vin?”

  Only my mother called me that, I wanted to shout back. I made a mental note to send Mama a text message.

  My favorite part of this homestay, in the many times that I had stayed here, had always been the veranda. It was elevated three, four feet from the ground, offering a good view of the road, the stream of SUVs and jam-packed jeepneys and tricycles coming to and from the resort town.

  “Babe?”

  “Coming—” I called out, fishing another stick from my near-empty pack. I plugged my earphones to my ears, turned the volume of my iPod to the hilt, and closed my eyes.

  Pagudpud disappeared.

  Scott disappeared.

  The smoke forgave me, descended down my throat.

  At the bus station, we found out that the trip to Manila had been moved to three o’clock. Of course, Scott sighed, dropping his backpack, a hand darting to his shoulder for the phantom strap of the lost knapsack. He sighed again before walking to the toilet.

  I took a seat in a row of plastic chairs attached to a steel rail near the canteen. A bevy of conductors was having coffee on the other side of the station.

  “You want anything?” Scott asked when he got back. He eyed a guy carrying a wicker basket filled with an array of treats—a rainbow of plastic wrappers, chips and biscuits, rice cakes and quail eggs and fried chicken skin and green mangoes. From an open icebox peeked bottles of Coke, iced tea, and water.

  “No, thanks,” I told him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I told him I might’ve figured out a way to, well, acquire money from the company.

  “Acquire?” he asked. “Interesting word choice.”

  I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. “Funnel? Redirect?”

  “Like money-money?” he asked. “Like, from UTelCo to your payroll account—”

  “I have an aunt in Vallejo—”

  “Of course you do.” He laughed the Dracula laugh, made more ominous, sensual by the new bass in his voice. “I can’t say I’m that surprised. You’ve always been a little odd.”

  “There’s some minor technical detail to iron out, but I think it can be done.” It’s been done before, I’m sure. It’s just a few hundred dollars. Agents do it all the time. They use their customers’ credit cards to buy shoes, go to restricted websites using “borrowed” subscriptions, download stuff for free. “If there’s only a way to order pizza from New York, I’m sure we would have done it. It’s not that complicated.”

  He smiled. “So this is why you’re defending our bag thief.”

  “Sir!” The voice was too jolly and too perky for the afternoon heat. Approaching us, right hand raised, was a man whose protruding belly and flabby arms belied the swiftness and grace with which he flitted across the open-air terminal—the benefit, I assumed, of being on the heavy side since childhood. I looked at Scott, hoping he’d tell me who the hell this person was, but he had stood up to give the hefty guy a hefty hug.

  “Hey!” Scott cried. “How’s it goin’, officer?”

  Disengaging from the hug, PO3 Wesley Pangalangan looked at me, remnants of the for-Caucasians-only grin on his face. How different he looked, how unthreatening without the blue uniform. Like someone you’d make fat jokes about at the mall. I took his outstretched hand. “Hello,” I said, like a retard.

  “Where are you off to?” Scott asked.

  “San Fernando. La Union. Just needed to submit some paperwork to the regional office.”

  “Nice,” Scott said.

  “We were expecting you at the station yesterday,” he said. He stayed until nine o’clock. Unpaid overtime. Good thing his station commander was in a good mood, treated everyone to pancit and soft drinks, thanks to Pacquiao. “But I was waiting for you.”

  “Why?” Scott asked.

  The policeman laughed.

  Celebratory howling issued from the other side of the waiting area, where a replay of the Pacquiao match was being shown on a tiny TV. A dog barked at the commotion. Behind it, a bus was reversing to a far-off corner of the terminal. I could almost hear the simultaneous sighs from the weary passengers. More than thirteen hours on the road. They would emerge from the bus, legs like jelly, a cold coming up because of the broken vent of the air-conditioning, but glad to either be home or finally on vacation.

  We had just passed by the town marker of Sinait in Ilocos Sur when our bus stopped to pick up passengers from a concrete shed. A man with a bundle of tupig climbed on-board, turning the air-conditioned air smoky. Scott eyed the man’s goods, the evenly folded green sheets with the thin layer of glutinous rice and grated coconut in between. He wanted one, I could tell. He was panning his head from side to side, like a troubled child.

  He didn’t have any money. When we recovered his knapsack from the police station, everything was there except for the cash (pesos and dollars) in his wallet, the coins in his coin purse, and, curiously, the packs of condoms.

  A tribute to me, those condoms.

  I rummaged inside my own bag now, took out my wallet, and called out to the man, who gave Scott five bundles, each with four pieces of tupig.

  “UTelCo money?” he asked, plucking a bundle and dumping the rest on top of the bag on my lap. The bus sped off.

  I woke up a few hours later. We were pulling over on a roadside restaurant in Sison in Pangasinan—a familiar stop for buses that plied the northern routes. Without exchanging a word, Scott and I got off, stretched the obligatory parts, and headed to the counter outside the main restaurant. We perused the menu in an overhead panel. Because of the color of Scott’s skin, someone quickly came to attend to his needs and, by auspicious extension, mine.

  I waited for him to say something and, when he didn’t, ordered two bowls of beef mami. A safe choice. We took a seat at one of the circular plastic tables by the barbecue grills. How nice this was, I thought, watching Scott take a sip from the broth. “We’re like an old couple,” I said.

  He put his knapsack on the table. “You know how important this is to me.”

  “Scott—”

  He opened it, as if to show me its contents. “My passport, my papers, my phone. My notebook. All those contact numbers and email addresses. Gosh, Alvin, do you imagine the kind of bureaucratic hell I would have to go through if I had indeed lost that bag? I’m normally very casual about these things but, Jesus. What were you thinking? I mean, how could you? You know, sometimes—”

  “What?” I said.

  “Sometimes I get reminded how much of a fucking child you still are and what the hell was I thinking.”

  “You have no idea how often that same thought crosses my mind, too.”

  He sighed.

  I sighed.

  Another bus pulled over, kicking dust from the gravelly lot.

  “Providence later?” he asked.

  I nodded. Our conductor began calling on passengers to return.

  The ride began to get progressively bumpier somewhere in Pampanga, where country faded irretrievably into city, one exit at a time. By the time we were in Bulacan, the sun about to set, the conductor had buckled up in his seat, the first time, I told Scott, that I had ever witnessed such a thing. There seemed to be something wrong with the vehicle’s suspension; the tiniest pebble on the road would make the bus bounce off the ground five, six times. Scott didn’t seem to mind. He was enjoying the ride, an almost visible whee in his face whenever we’d run over something. “Heard somewhere that academics should always travel third class,” he said. “Keeps us grounded.”

  Everyone soon seemed to have lived with the perpetual recoil—adaptable Filipinos—which began to have a soothing, soporific effect. Scott and
I had been asleep, my head on his shoulder, when the vehicle screeched to a halt somewhere in Cubao. Outside my window, EDSA was a parking lot, where vehicles moved in two-inch heaves to be stuck again for the next ten minutes. Elsewhere, the row of bus terminals, the mad stream of people, the slapdash bus fronts raring to join the fray. “What now?” Scott asked, haze of sleep in his eyes.

  Kilometer Zero.

  Our dilemma was solved by default when the conductor stood up and explained that the bus was cutting its trip to Pasay and instead taking the next U-turn slot. “Traffic, very bad,” he told Scott on his way to the back of the bus, to wake up some passengers.

  “Half a day, we were here,” Scott said, retrieving his backpack from the overhead compartment. “I think I’m going to miss it.” He gave his backrest a couple of taps.

  On the sidewalk, backpacks secured on our chests, I asked him if he was ready. “For what?” he asked.

  For the city you love so much, I thought. I grabbed his cold hand and pulled.

  This part of Manila always vibrated and stirred with a kind of baleful glee. For blocks, open storefronts were manned by half-naked men slouched on folding chairs, waving cardboard fans to chase away scourges of mosquitoes and flies. For sale, hanging on hooks: leather belts, windbreakers, Halloween masks. On rickety tables: Ray-Bans, Rolexes, Sennheisers. On tarpaulin mats: Nike shoes, Nokia chargers, harassed-looking Barbies. There were persistent whispers. “Rolex, sir, Rolex.” “Sir, iPod.” “Girls? Very young. Fifteen.” Then sudden bursts of air-conditioning from Jollibee, 7-Eleven, LBC. A red-lit stairway to a seedy apartelle (P180 for three hours). Dunkin Donuts, KFC, Burger King. On the street, a concrete barrier on its side. An open manhole. A sleeping child. Always, the far-away notes from a videoke machine. “Hotel California.” “Skyline Pigeon.” “Halik.”